Last week, the federal government announced that the well-connected Canadian oligarchs, the Irving Family, and its Atlantic Towing division, had won a $67 million dollar contract to supply two stand by rescue “tugs” for the BC coast.

In my interactions among my seafaring peers, the disgust over this decision is barely containable.

Primarily because most know Atlantic Towing as a major Newfoundland and Nova Scotia operator in the offshore oil and gas industry, currently a lucrative job market. However due to local politics, any Canadian seafarers not based in Newfoundland are generally not allowed to participate in this market – this is part of the regulations – however, Newfoundland residents are free to work in any other market they choose, such as the great lakes, Alberta, and in BC.

The ships highlighted in the press release are older platform supply vessels, veterans of the Newfoundland coast, big indeed, but designed for a completely different environment that the BC coast. It’s inlet laden coast, filled with tight passages and tricky shoals posed serious challenges to local mariners as it is. Based on my sailing experience on this coast, and even as an engineer, I can see these old vessels are not a right fit on the BC coast.

Dominic LeBlanc from Wikipedia

In a further ‘FU’ to coastal BC people, the government bypassed the wishes of the Heiltsuk people of Bella Bella in this decision, and considering Atlantic Towing’s complete lack of infrastructure on this coast, one must assume that very few officers and crew from the BC coast will crew these vessels.

The Heiltsuk and all west coast indigenous are excellent seafarers and in their own waters are unsurpassed by anyone. Awarding this contract to them and their partners will provide them with the hand up, not out they need to fulfil their destiny and provide excellent Coastal protection.

For Trudeau to blatantly award this contract to the Irvings to provide worn, unsuitable vessels from the east coast, crewed by easterners is intolerable. West coast indigenous are excited to participate in the $1.5 bn Oceans Protection Plan and to have it turned into the Liberal Party Irvings Protection Plan is a smack in the face to peoplekind who can do a remarkable job. It is another betrayal of trust, not 'reconciliation'.

bs martin there's lots of successful Indigenous people who are not on board with your colonialist mentality.

And there are a lot more who are. Like any other demographic, the majority support economic security over cultural marxism.

economic security yup my family included. but it doesn't mean losing culture it means balancing and moving into the future with both culture and economic security intact. 7 generations philosophy. my several greats grandfather Jean Baptiste Cope understood this at the time of the first Treaty signing in 1752 between the English even though he renounced it 6 months later.

his words spoke to us in the now and how he saw the future could and would be.

in todays world, Chief Gordie Planes is doing a great job of both, as an example of those FN not in a extraction resource industry struggle. so too with Chief Clarence Louie. then there's GRE and Jerry Montour.

all sorts of entrepreneurial Bands and economic initiatives going on in BC too. inclusive to balancing with culture.

We are gravely concerned by the RCMP's decision to bar journalists from the site of yesterday's raid, and their continued refusal to allow media access to the area today as police prepare for a raid on the Unist’ot’en checkpoint. The right to freedom of the press is guaranteed in our constitution and the right of the public to know is fundamental to our democracy.

As a media outlet, we stand in solidarity with journalists who are being blocked from doing their jobs by our federal police force. We note with concern that the department of public safety and the minister responsible for the RCMP, Ralph Goodale, have referred requests for comment to the RCMP, describing the exclusion of media as an "operational matter." Restricting the constitutional rights of journalists is not an operational matter, and this precedent must not be allowed to stand.

As Tom Henheffer, vice president of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, told APTN, “It sounds like the RCMP is once again using every tactic that they can to bend the law as much as possible to prevent journalists from gaining access to sites.” “This is a tactic that is very commonly employed and is very difficult to fight against in the moment because [police] know that when you’ve got a bunch of officers with guns telling people what they can and cannot do, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether the law is on the RCMP’s side or not — because it takes too long for a journalist to get a lawyer, go to court to get an order to allow them to get on to the site.”

You are chasing red herrings thrown out to deflect from the real issue. To whit: every court decision has affirmed and reaffirmed that the Crown needs to "consult and, if necessary accommodate ".

The most recent decision further advises that sending bureaucrats to take notes without any power to respond does not meet the threshold for consulting. Good faith consultation requires a crown representative with the power to "if necessary, accommodate".

In other words, Trudeau needs to get off the ski hill at Whistler and settle the issue rather than doing the funky chicken avoiding it. It is the fault of politicians and their powerful apparatchiks to make the hard decisions that has led to this impasse. As long as they can subvert and deflect, they will and you, epaulo are a dupe for helping them.

Einstein once famously replied, when asked about the difference between genius and stupidity: "Genius has limits".

They need to be dragged to the negotiating table and forced to deal fairly and in good faith with the question of indigenous inclusion and accommodation. The side issues like pipelines will then sort themselves out.

There may be no right way to do fossil-fuel megaprojects at all anymore if we’re going to have a hope in hell of meeting our 2015 Paris Climate Accord commitments, but as far as the massive LNG Canada Kitimat plant and pipeline project goes – with the showdown this week on a remote British Columbia backroad that immediately escalated into protests and marches and sit-ins across the country – the politics, promises and planning seem to have gotten just about everything wrong.

You could start with the way Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cheered LNG Canada’s announcement last October that the green light LNG got from B.C’s NDP government meant full steam ahead for its long-planned $40 billion project, which is to include a new pipeline from Dawson Creek in the Peace River country to a liquifaction plant and export facility at Kitimat on the B.C. coast.

“Today’s announcement by LNG Canada represents the single largest private-sector investment project in Canadian history,” Trudeau said. “It is a vote of confidence in a country that recognizes the need to develop our energy in a way that takes the environment into account, and that works in meaningful partnership with Indigenous people.”

A closer look at the LNG Canada consortium shows a lot less in the way of private sector investment than you might think. Royal Dutch Shell and Mitsubishi are private companies, but the other partners in the consortium aren’t. The Malaysian government owns Petronas. Petro-China is the listed arm of the Chinese government’s China National Petroleum Corporation. And the South Korean government own the Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS).

The words “meaningful partnership with Indigenous people” don’t exactly spring to mind, either, in light of that showdown on Monday more than 40 kilometres into the mountains on the Morice West Forest Service Road. A team of Mounties all kitted out in military gear had been dispatched to pull down a blockade that local Wet’suwet’en people had set up to keep TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink pipeline workers out of their territory.

quote:

Anticipating the Mounties moving against the Unist’ot’en crew, another group of Wet’suwet’en chiefs set up another roadbock 20 kilometres closer to town on the Morice Forest Service Road, and, armed with an amended injunction order, the RCMP went after that group on Monday, arresting 14 people. “We respect the rights of individuals to peacefully express their point of view, as long as their activities do not disrupt or jeopardize the safety of the public, our employees, our contractors, and even themselves,” Coastal GasLink president Rick Gateman explained Monday. This was a strange echo of a statement from Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale’s office: “The RCMP respects and protects the right to peaceful demonstrations as guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

The problem here is that the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs were not intending to merely “express their views,” peacefully or otherwise, and the Charter of Rights has nothing to do with it. The Charter comes under Section 25 of the Constitution. Aboriginal rights are protected in Section 35. It’s the aboriginal rights and title of the Wet’suewet’en people that are at stake here, and that’s the subject that the federal Liberal government, and B.C.’s NDP government, are trying to avoid.

The thing is, it doesn’t much matter what those 20 band councils have to say for themselves. What matters is what the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and their clans and their house groups say, and for several years they have been saying, fairly consistently, thanks, but no thanks, no pipeline, no damn way.

The band councils will do what they think they need to do, so fair play to them. But they’re like municipal governments. In Wet’suwet’en country, the law is the ancient feast system, and the hereditary chiefs are bound to uphold the law. That’s not just some hippie anthropologist’s point of view, either. It’s the view of the Supreme Court of Canada, in its specific findings in the landmark 1997 Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en case, Delgamuukw versus the Queen. It was the hereditary chiefs who fought and won that court battle. In Wet’suwet’en country, aboriginal rights and title are vested in the hereditary chiefs and their clans and their house groups.

quote:

If you think that’s a jurisdictional nightmare, bear in mind that the National Energy Board still doesn’t even know whether it’s involved in any of this, or whether provincial or federal jurisdiction holds higher sway. The NEB will be holding hearings in March to determine whether the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission gave the whole project the go-ahead unlawfully. If that’s how things shake out, the whole project has to be re-submitted for approval under a formal, dismal, drawn-out NEB process.

The other thing both the federal and provincial governments are trying to avoid is any public scrutiny of Trudeau’s and Premier John Horgan’s eloquent (but oddly imprecise) commitments to First Nations that their consent should be required, as per the United Nations’ guidance, for industrial developments such as pipelines to proceed in areas subject to some degree of aboriginal title.

Alex Spence, centre, who is originally from Haida Gwaii, beats a drum and sings during a march in support of pipeline protesters in northwestern British Columbia, in Vancouver, on Tuesday. DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS

..horgan is being dishonest. it's not a protest it's an indigenous right on their unceded territory.

Another example of a deflection. Attempting to portray this struggle as a "protest" With indigenous on one side and Coastal Gaslink on the other while everybody's favourite Uncle John ( nothin to do with me, folks) tries to help.

Horgan is just as guilty as Walking Eagle in the forked tongue department as they try to keep on good terms with indigenous while simultaneously trying to avoid the elephant in the room - not pipelines but Delgamuukw and the Crown's responsibility for this mess.

There may be no right way to do fossil-fuel megaprojects at all anymore if we’re going to have a hope in hell of meeting our 2015 Paris Climate Accord commitments, but as far as the massive LNG Canada Kitimat plant and pipeline project goes – with the showdown this week on a remote British Columbia backroad that immediately escalated into protests and marches and sit-ins across the country – the politics, promises and planning seem to have gotten just about everything wrong.

You could start with the way Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cheered LNG Canada’s announcement last October that the green light LNG got from B.C’s NDP government meant full steam ahead for its long-planned $40 billion project, which is to include a new pipeline from Dawson Creek in the Peace River country to a liquifaction plant and export facility at Kitimat on the B.C. coast.

“Today’s announcement by LNG Canada represents the single largest private-sector investment project in Canadian history,” Trudeau said. “It is a vote of confidence in a country that recognizes the need to develop our energy in a way that takes the environment into account, and that works in meaningful partnership with Indigenous people.”

A closer look at the LNG Canada consortium shows a lot less in the way of private sector investment than you might think. Royal Dutch Shell and Mitsubishi are private companies, but the other partners in the consortium aren’t. The Malaysian government owns Petronas. Petro-China is the listed arm of the Chinese government’s China National Petroleum Corporation. And the South Korean government own the Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS).

The words “meaningful partnership with Indigenous people” don’t exactly spring to mind, either, in light of that showdown on Monday more than 40 kilometres into the mountains on the Morice West Forest Service Road. A team of Mounties all kitted out in military gear had been dispatched to pull down a blockade that local Wet’suwet’en people had set up to keep TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink pipeline workers out of their territory.

quote:

Anticipating the Mounties moving against the Unist’ot’en crew, another group of Wet’suwet’en chiefs set up another roadbock 20 kilometres closer to town on the Morice Forest Service Road, and, armed with an amended injunction order, the RCMP went after that group on Monday, arresting 14 people. “We respect the rights of individuals to peacefully express their point of view, as long as their activities do not disrupt or jeopardize the safety of the public, our employees, our contractors, and even themselves,” Coastal GasLink president Rick Gateman explained Monday. This was a strange echo of a statement from Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale’s office: “The RCMP respects and protects the right to peaceful demonstrations as guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

The problem here is that the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs were not intending to merely “express their views,” peacefully or otherwise, and the Charter of Rights has nothing to do with it. The Charter comes under Section 25 of the Constitution. Aboriginal rights are protected in Section 35. It’s the aboriginal rights and title of the Wet’suewet’en people that are at stake here, and that’s the subject that the federal Liberal government, and B.C.’s NDP government, are trying to avoid.

The thing is, it doesn’t much matter what those 20 band councils have to say for themselves. What matters is what the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and their clans and their house groups say, and for several years they have been saying, fairly consistently, thanks, but no thanks, no pipeline, no damn way.

The band councils will do what they think they need to do, so fair play to them. But they’re like municipal governments. In Wet’suwet’en country, the law is the ancient feast system, and the hereditary chiefs are bound to uphold the law. That’s not just some hippie anthropologist’s point of view, either. It’s the view of the Supreme Court of Canada, in its specific findings in the landmark 1997 Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en case, Delgamuukw versus the Queen. It was the hereditary chiefs who fought and won that court battle. In Wet’suwet’en country, aboriginal rights and title are vested in the hereditary chiefs and their clans and their house groups.

quote:

If you think that’s a jurisdictional nightmare, bear in mind that the National Energy Board still doesn’t even know whether it’s involved in any of this, or whether provincial or federal jurisdiction holds higher sway. The NEB will be holding hearings in March to determine whether the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission gave the whole project the go-ahead unlawfully. If that’s how things shake out, the whole project has to be re-submitted for approval under a formal, dismal, drawn-out NEB process.

The other thing both the federal and provincial governments are trying to avoid is any public scrutiny of Trudeau’s and Premier John Horgan’s eloquent (but oddly imprecise) commitments to First Nations that their consent should be required, as per the United Nations’ guidance, for industrial developments such as pipelines to proceed in areas subject to some degree of aboriginal title.

agree martin more economic development has to happen and it is. a couple of decades ago when i was closing in on 20 there was barely a whisper about FN businesses. the tide turned in 2 short decades. imagine 2 decades from now.

“We recognize the right of individuals to protest. We recognize the rights of those across the country who wanted to voice their concerns about this project,” said Horgan.

“However, it has been my view that LNG Canada has shown they understand the importance of consultation and meaningful reconciliation with First Nations and that’s why they have signed agreements with every First Nation along the pipeline corridor.”

...

Horgan said that while he “absolutely respects” the right to protest, yesterday’s demonstrations were “not uniformly focused on Wet’suwet’en territory.”

“There are no orcas on Wet’suwet’en territory — there were those that were highlighting that. There were those talking about diluted bitumen. There were those talking about eradicating capitalism. There was a whole bunch of discontent on display for Canadians to see yesterday.”

Horgan added that the pipeline project in northern BC has strong support from some First Nations.

“When it comes to this project in the north particularly, there are nations that are wildly enthusiastic about the prospects that this opens up for their future and I think that that needs to be balanced in the coverage of the protests from yesterday.”

When asked about protestors who were participating in the blockade and breaking the injunction, Horgan said that “they have any right to object” because “that is a fundamental principle in Canada and British Columbia.”

But Horgan added that breaking the law comes with penalties. “If they are breaking the law, there are consequences for that and that’s why 14 people were arrested [on Monday].”

“Again, you have every right to exercise your dissent and you have every expectation that you will have to pay the consequences for that.”

Yes, all the NDP scum are coming out of the woodwork pretending they support Indigenous sovereignty, which they clearly don't but they surely do recognize a political opportunity.

"Today is once again proof - because some forget that there is no reconciliation to be had in Canada. Every single right we have as native people must be asserted, lived and defended - whether it is so-called court recognized or not. Delgamuukw didn't help Wet'suwet'en..rise."

Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs will open gate and comply with injunction. They do not want violence that happened in Gitdimt'en to repeat here. Many tears shed. Police negotiating with Clan to possibly allow gate to stay up. This is not over. #wetsuwetenstrong#unistoten

...

2:55pm: ALL arrested on January 7th at Wet'suwet'en checkpoint now confirmed RELEASED from incarceration!

As the world watches tensions unfold over a natural gas pipeline project in northern B.C., questions are emerging over who companies should consult when seeking approval for resource projects. But who is actually in charge? CBC reporter Angela Sterritt breaks it down.

Spirit of the Buffalo camp against the Line 3 pipeline in the prairies stands in solidarity with the Unist’ot’en blockade and the Wet'suwet'en people resisting LNG development in their homelands on the west coast.

Join us this Sunday for trip to Spirit of the Buffalo camp to send a message to the Wet'suwet'en warriors, to let them know that we hear them, that these fights are connected, and that we are standing together.

We will leave from 2 locations in Winnipeg and have a potluck lunch at the camp. Schedule as follows:

10:45am - Gather and leave from Tim Horton's parking lot at 255 Maryland St (just south of Portage)
11:15am - Pick up from Sobey's Extra on Pembina
12:30-2:30pm - Potluck lunch at Spirit of the Buffalo camp and solidarity video/photos to send to the Wet'suwet'en
4pm - Arrive back in Winnipeg

Please RSVP 'going' so that we know how many people to expect. Please also let us know if you have a vehicle and would be willing to drive.

The Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs have by absolutely no means agreed to let the Coastal GasLink pipeline tear through our traditional territories.

On January 7th at the Gidumt’en access point, the RCMP used excessive and brutal force. We expected a large response, we did not expect a military level invasion where our unarmed women and elders were faced with automatic weapons and bulldozers.

While the chiefs have a responsibility to protect the land, they also have a duty to protect our land defenders. Our people faced an incredible risk of injury or death and that is not a risk we are willing to take for an interim injunction. The agreement we made allows Coastal GasLink to temporarily work behind the Unist’ot’en gate. This will continue to be a waste of their time and resources as they will not be building a pipeline in our traditional territory.

This injunction was against Warner Naziel, Freda Huson, and Jane and John Doe as individuals. Our efforts over the past month made the RCMP, Coastal GasLink, and the colonial governments recognize that this is not an issue of individual “protestors” but rather an issue of our house chiefs’ jurisdiction to make decisions on our own lands. We have fought for many years to make this point by politely telling it like it is. Now, with the world watching, with our voices reverberating around the globe, we have turned the tables.

There can be no question now that this is an issue of Wet’suwet’en Rights and Title. We have demonstrated that this fight is about more than a pipeline; it is about the right of Indigenous peoples around the world to exercise Free, Prior, and Informed Consent....

"We agree the rule of law has to apply, but doesn't that mean that when there's recognition of the proper title holder you deal with the proper title holder?" says Peter Grant, legal counsel for the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs.

But Trudeau’s actions have not lived up to his fine rhetoric. For most of last year he was embroiled in a bitter and expensive controversy about the Kinder Morgan tar sands pipeline (see here and here for more info).

And this year has not got off to a better start for him either. For the last few days, there has been a major confrontation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and First Nations about the building of yet more fossil fuel infrastructure: a $6.2 billion gas natural gas pipeline by TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink. The pipeline is due to transport fracked natural gas from northeastern B.C. some 670 kilometres to the coast where an LNG Canada facility is due to be built too.

Indeed Trudeau has another crisis on his hands and once again his administration seems to be ciding with oil and gas. His political legacy is on the line once more.

As the Globe and Mailreported this week: “On a forestry road south of Houston, B.C., members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation are running checkpoints to oppose a pipeline being built on their traditional territory… Activity at the two camps – Unist’ot’en, which has been around since 2010, and Gidimt’en, which was built late last year and is named after one of the five clans – had been escalating after a B.C. Supreme Court ruling in December giving the builders of the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline an injunction so they could use the road unimpeded.”

Members of the Wet’suwet’en Nation argue that they were never consulted about the pipeline and that it violates their constitutional rights.

quote:

And this week the authorities responded with brute force and ignorance again. As the Washington Post noted: “The pictures emerging from the scene of an anti-pipeline action in British Columbia could not be more off-brand for Justin Trudeau.”

Whereas Trudeau is all spin and shine, the images from earlier in the week were the opposite. The RCMP “used excessive and brutal force” to enter one of the fortified checkpoints where the Wet’suwet’en First Nation were blocking the workers from gaining entry onto their protected and unceded land.

Although they knew the Police were coming, they were taken aback by state brutality. As a spokesperson for The Unist’ot’en camp said: “We expected a large response, we did not expect a military level invasion where our unarmed women and elders were faced with automatic weapons and bulldozers.”

Some fourteen people were arrested. Reacting to footage of tactics by the RCMP, author and activist Naomi Klein tweeted “a shameful day for Canada, which has marketed itself as a progressive leader on climate and Indigenous rights.”

Klein added that this was all “for a gas pipeline that is entirely incompatible with a safe climate.”

A shameful day for Canada, which has marketed itself as a progressive leader on climate and Indigenous rights. It has just invaded unceded Wet'suwet'en territory and arrested land defenders, all for a gas pipeline that is entirely incompatible with a safe climate. https://t.co/RpSy3fLg3H

ALERT - Even as our chiefs attempt to negotiate safe access to our Yin'tah with the RCMP, we have seen RCMP helicopters flying overhead. Wet'suwet'en and non-Wet'suwet'en members of the public are still being denied access to our territory by police, and we have received word that the RCMP are amassing forces in Houston. This is not over. All eyes on our camp.